11 Things You Might Not Know About the Coast Guard

The U.S. Coast Guard has a unique job in the military, with a role in law enforcement and a role in war. Its 42,000 active duty members, as well as its 7500 reservists and 30,000 members of the auxiliary, are called guardians. Here are a few things you might not have known about them.

1. THE COAST GUARD HAS A REAL PROBLEM WITH AARON BURR.

Alexander Hamilton is the father of the Coast Guard. In Federalist No. 12, Hamilton posited that a “few armed vessels, judiciously stationed at the entrances of our ports, might at a small expense be made useful sentinels of the laws.” Their purpose would be to enforce maritime laws and to collect tariffs. In 1790, the United States was flat broke, and Hamilton, now Secretary of the Treasury, pushed hard for the creation of his fleet to help get the coffers filled. The result was the Revenue-Marine, later renamed the Revenue Cutter Service, and they eventually merged with the United States Life-Saving Service (which helped shipwrecked sailors) to form the Coast Guard.

2. FOR A WHILE, THE FORERUNNER TO THE COAST GUARD WAS THE ONLY NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES.

In 1790, the Continental Navy was disbanded, and the only navy at the disposal of the United States was Hamilton’s Revenue-Marine. At the time, the Barbary pirates posed a threat to the U.S. at sea, and the job of dealing with them fell to the Revenue-Marine. The first three warships of the U.S. Navy didn’t set sail until 1797.

3. THE COAST GUARD RAN THE DISTRICT OF ALASKA.

As part of an effort to lay telegraph cable from the United States to Russia, the U.S. Lighthouse Service, working subordinate to the Revenue Cutter Service, made first contact with Russia’s Alaskan coast. Later, the Revenue Cutter Service brought U.S. officials to and from the new Alaskan territory. During the 1870s, the service was charged with enforcing hunting and fishing laws in the territory (seals, especially, were valuable for their pelts and hunted to the point of near-extinction). They were also given responsibility for rescuing ships in the Bering Sea and along the Arctic coast. The upshot is that the massive role of the Coast Guard’s predecessor meant that it was the only game in town—it essentially was the government. It even maintained “court cruises,” whereby judicial officials were sailed in to try criminal cases. It also provided care and comfort in the forms of food, medicine, and supplies to villagers in the arctic.

4. ONE MEMBER OF THE COAST GUARD PICKED A HELL OF A WEEK TO QUIT DRINKING.

Lloyd Bridges, Beau Bridges, and Jeff Bridges (The Dude!) all served in the Coast Guard, as did “The King,” Arnold Palmer. The Joker’s shipmates probably got a few laughs in—Cesar Romero was a guardian. Maybe the most famous member of them all, though: Popeye.

5. THE COAST GUARD IS NOT PART OF THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE.

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The United States Coast Guard is the only branch of military service that doesn’t belong to the Defense Department. Rather, it is an arm of the Department of Homeland Security. Before the establishment of the DHS in 2002, it belonged to the Department of Transportation. Before that, it belonged to the Treasury Department. During a declared war, the Department of Defense can take operational control of the Coast Guard.

6. THE EXOSPHERE IS A KIND OF COAST.

Commander Bruce Melnick, the chief test pilot at the Coast Guard Aircraft Program Office, was the first guardian selected by NASA to serve as an astronaut. He flew on the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990 and on the maiden voyage of the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992. He has logged over 300 hours of space flight.

7. ADMISSION TO THE COAST GUARD ACADEMY DOES NOT REQUIRE CONGRESSIONAL NOMINATION.

Every year, 300 cadets attend the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. Cadets graduate as ensigns and have the option of attending flight school or graduate school. Unlike the other service schools, admission to the Coast Guard Academy does not require Congressional nomination. This is because the school’s first superintendent objected to the lousy quality of political appointments in general. Both Coast Guard astronauts are graduates of its academy.

8. IF THE DOGS ARE COMING AFTER YOU, IT'S GOING TO BE A BAD DAY.

Pirates seize your oil rig? You’re going to want to talk to the DOG. The Coast Guard command that handles counter-terrorism and high-threat situations is called the Deployable Operations Group. They're a quick reaction force whose teams handle maritime interdiction, force protection, nuclear-biological-chemical threats, counter-piracy, counter-terrorism, and anti-terrorism. Because the U.S. Coast Guard does not belong to the Department of Defense, its units do not belong to Special Operations Command. That said, the Navy has opened up its Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL course to guardians, and have graduated Coast Guard SEALs.

9. IT HAS A FRATERNAL ORDER KNOWN AS THE ANCIENT ORDER OF THE PTERODACTYL.

The Coast Guard Aviation Association is a fraternal organization of Coast Guard aviators. Its membership includes guardians and members of other military branches (of the United States and other countries) who have flown Coast Guard aircraft. Until 2007, it was known as the Ancient Order of the Pterodactyl.

10. THE LONGEST-SERVING COAST GUARD AVIATOR HOLDS A SPECIAL HONOR.

The longest-serving active Coast Guard aviator is designated as the Ancient Albatross. This pilot is bestowed traditional aviation gear of a leather coat, leather helmet, goggles, and white scarf, as well as the Royal Pterodactyl Egg. According to regulation, “Eligibility for the title of Ancient Albatross and entitlement to the award will be determined by ascertaining that aviator or aviation pilot on active duty whose date of designation as such precedes in point of time that of any other Coast Guard aviator or aviation pilot.”

11. THEIR AVERAGE DAY ISN'T SO AVERAGE.

According to the U.S. Coast Guard Boating Resource Center, on an average day, the Coast Guard conducts 109 searches and rescues, saves ten lives, seizes 169 pounds of marijuana and 306 pounds of cocaine worth $9,589,000.00, and investigates six vessel casualties.

You see them every day, on TV shows, the news, and in movies, but how well do you know the most oft-used film transitions? Here are the big five:

1. THE DISSOLVE

The dissolve is an editing technique where one clip seems to fade—or dissolve—into the next. As the first clip is fading out, getting lighter and lighter, the second clip starts fading in, becoming more and more prominent. The process usually happens so subtly and so quickly, the viewer isn't even aware of the transition. The above video offers a great overview of the cut, with examples.

2. THE WIPE

This transition is the opposite of the dissolve in that it draws attention to itself. The best example of the wipe is what's known as the Iris Wipe, which you usually find in silent films, like Buster Keaton's or the Merrie Melodies cartoons—the circle getting smaller and smaller. Other wipe shapes include stars, diamonds, and the old turning clock.

The Star Wars films are chock-full of attention-grabbing wipes. Here are two good examples from The Empire Strikes Back. The first shows the clock wipe; the second, the diagonal wipe (pay no attention to the broken blocks at the start of the second clip—that's a technical glitch, not part of the film).

3. THE CUTAWAY

As the name implies, in the basic cutaway, the filmmaker is moving from the action to something else, and then coming back to the action. Cutaways are used to edit out boring shots (like people driving to their destination—why not see what the character is seeing or even thinking sometimes?) or add action to a sequence by changing the pace of the footage. My favorite use of the cutaway is in Family Guy, where the technique is used to insert throwaway gags. Here's a great example:

4. THE L CUT

The L Cut, also called a split edit, is a very cool technique whose name dates back to the old analog film days.

The audio track on a strip of celluloid film runs along the side, near the sprocket holes. In the L Cut transition, the editor traditionally cut the picture frames out of the strip, but left the narrow audio track intact, thus creating an L-shape out of the film. A different camera angle, or scene was then spliced into the spot where the old picture was, so the audio from the old footage was now cut over the new footage.

Of course, with digital editing, one doesn't need to physically cut anything anymore, but the transition is still widely used, and the name has remained the same.

Split edits like these are especially effective in portraying conversations. Imagine how a simple conversation between two people might look if all we ever got was a ping-pong edit back and forth between the two people talking. The L cut allows the viewer to read the emotion on the listener's face, as the dialogue continues over, as we see in this clip from Ferris Bueller's Day Off:

5. THE FADE

The fade in and fade out usually signal the beginning or end of a scene, especially if the filmmaker is fading to/from black. This is the most common, of course, but fading to white has become trendy, too. The opening title sequence from the HBO series Six Feet Under featured many fades to black and a couple brief fades to white. The very last bit in the sequence fades slowly to white, and is my all-time favorite example of the transition:

For close to 90 years, Chic Young’s comic strip Blondie has been a constant in newspapers around the world, reaching an estimated 280 million readers in 55 countries. Despite its title, most readers are probably more familiar with Blondie’s husband, the sandwich-consuming Dagwood. Check out some facts about the comic’s origins, its feature film franchise, and a very unfortunate incident involving a dirty word that rocked Blondie's readership to its core.

1. BLONDIE WAS INSPIRED BY 1920S FLAPPERS.

IDW/King Features Syndicate

Before Blondie debuted in 1930, cartoonist Chic Young had attempted to create a female-driven strip without a lot of success. Titles like Beautiful Bab and Dumb Dora were some of the more unfortunate ideas, with Young preoccupied by the notion of having a vapid leading lady. For Blondie, Young initially pursued the “dumb blonde” stereotype before dialing down the chauvinism and allowing the single, mingling Blondie Boopadoop to appear at least as intelligent as the succession of boyfriends courting her in the strip. Later, Blondie would become the voice of reason [PDF] to fiance Dagwood Bumstead’s bumbling presence, inverting the gender roles of Young’s previous strips.

2. YOUNG SOLD THE STRIP BY SENDING EDITORS A PAPER DOLL OF BLONDIE IN LINGERIE.

For the debut of Blondie, Young’s syndicate, King Features, launched an aggressive mailing campaign in an effort to entice newspaper editors to pick up the strip. Editors first received a letter “announcing” the engagement of Blondie and Dagwood, which was followed by protestations from the Bumstead family and eventually a cardboard suitcase that cautioned them not to peek inside. Naturally, everyone did. Inside was a paper doll cutout of Blondie wearing lingerie, with her “wardrobe” (more paper doll clothing) included.

3. DAGWOOD WAS ORIGINALLY THE HEIR TO A RAILROAD FORTUNE.

He might strike you as incapable of tying his own shoes, but there was a time when Dagwood Bumstead carried real potential. Instead of his current working-stiff incarnation, Dagwood was originally heir to his billionaire father’s railroad fortune. But when he married Blondie in 1933, the Bumstead family effectively disowned him, fearing Blondie was only out for his money. The couple’s move to the middle class was Young’s way of acknowledging the fallout of the Great Depression.

4. DAGWOOD WENT ON A HUNGER STRIKE IN ORDER TO MARRY BLONDIE.

With the Bumstead family highly skeptical of Dagwood’s plans to marry Blondie, the would-be groom decided to earn their blessing by going on a hunger strike that played out in real time. For 28 days, Dagwood refused to eat and grew frail until his family finally consented to the marriage. The narrative stunt drew the attention of new readers, raising Blondie’s profile on the comic pages.

5. DAGWOOD AND BLONDIE SCANDALOUSLY SLEPT IN THE SAME BED.

King Features Syndicate

For a good portion of the 20th century, it was seen as proper to depict married couples on television or in comics as sleeping in twin beds, eliminating any hint of carnal activities happening off-screen. (Or in this case, off-panel.) But Young thought this was juvenile and insisted that Blondie and Dagwood appear sleeping in the same double bed. Perhaps not coincidentally, the two had their first child, Alexander, in 1934.

6. THE EARLY STRIPS HAD AN UNFORTUNATE PREOCCUPATION WITH DOMESTIC VIOLENCE.

While Blondie and Dagwood got along without incident, the same couldn’t be said for another couple featured in the strip’s early years. One of Blondie’s earlier suitors, Hiho, married girlfriend Betty and the two became supporting characters in the strip. Hiho and Betty had what could be considered a tumultuous relationship, with each threatening to punch out the other on a regular basis [PDF]. Young eventually phased the two out, replacing them with far less volatile Bumstead neighbors Herb and Tootsie Woodley.

7. DAGWOOD ENDORSED NUCLEAR POWER.

After the atomic bomb was dropped twice to bring an end to World War II, American citizens understandably grew skittish about the ramifications of wielding such power. To ease their minds, the U.S. military partnered with Young to produce 1949’s Dagwood Splits the Atom, a “fun” booklet that sees the character shrunk down in size to help readers understand atomic power and nuclear fission. Although other comic characters like Popeye appear, it’s Dagwood who has the honors of blowing a neutron into a uranium atom in order to split it.

8. YOUNG’S DEATH PROMPTED NEWSPAPERS TO DROP THE STRIP.

Although Young’s son Dean had been working on Blondie and was prepared to take over writing duties when his father passed away in 1973, newspapers weren’t so sure. According to Young, more than 600 papers canceled the strip when his father died, fearing it would suffer a drop in quality. Young persevered and eventually won over the naysayers, reclaiming space in the papers and adding several hundred more. (Currently, Young writes the strip and artist John Marshall illustrates.)

9. THE STRIP LAUNCHED 28 FEATURE FILMS.

In 1938, with Blondie firmly entrenched on the comics pages, King Features and Young agreed to license the strip to Columbia Pictures for a series of live-action feature films. The movies were shot quickly and economically with stars Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake portraying Blondie and Dagwood, respectively. The studio produced 28 features between 1938 and 1950. Attempts to adapt the comic to television were less successful. A 1954 pilot was unaired, while a 1957 series lasted just one season. Another 13-episode iteration was produced in 1968-69, with Bruce Lee appearing as a karate instructor in the last episode.

10. THE STRIP CAUGHT FLAK FOR USING A DIRTY WORD IN 2004.

With their relatively trivial subject matter, comic strips rarely have the potential to offend. A 2004 Blondie entry proved to be an exception. In the strip, a character uses the word “scumbag” to describe a baseball umpire. Readers wrote in to Dean Young to lodge complaints, with Mr. Young and his proofreaders apparently unaware that “scumbag” is a euphemism for a used prophylactic.

11. ALMOST EVERY COMIC STRIP CHARACTER AROUND DROPPED IN FOR THEIR 75TH ANNIVERSARY.

King Features Syndicate

Before shared universes were a thing, Blondie’s 75th anniversary strip published September 4, 2005 had a cameo from virtually every notable comic strip character past and present. As Dagwood and Blondie hold up a cake—shaped like a sandwich, naturally—they’re surrounded by Ziggy, Garfield, Beetle Bailey, Hagar the Horrible, Dilbert, and dozens of others. In the weeks leading up to the strip, the comics pages were full of Blondie references and sight gags.